fine motor delays and pre-reading skills

At Rondel’s evaluation for services with the school district, he scored low enough on his fine motor skills to be classified as having a moderate delay (which is significant enough to qualify for special services). When he draws or paints, he can’t seem to figure out how to hold his writing tool, switching up his grasp every few minutes, and even changing hands periodically. To put in simply, he looks like a much younger child – and his drawings reflect that: although he attempts to add depth and detail to his drawings (at a level up to or above the standard for his age), what he puts down on the paper is not recognizable as the object he is trying to create.

However, when he sits down with Duplos or Brain Flakes, he can build creations that are complex and true to form. His Duplo animals really look like the different animals he’s trying to make – he’s constructed dinosaurs, lions, spiders, owls, bats, and more, and a lot of them are very realistic and innovatively detailed (Duplos are a challenging medium for fine detail, after all). With the flakes, he’s currently working on making all the letters of the alphabet; in the process, of course, he is intimately familiarizing himself with the shape and orientation of each letter just as another child might through writing the letters over and over again on paper. Additionally, he is beginning to wonder about letters in general, and asked me tonight what letters were for. So he is still gaining valuable pre-reading skills, despite the fine-motor struggles – and he is doing so through a self-motivated, self-developed method, without any external pressure or stigma.

My desire as Rondel’s parent isn’t to mold him into some predetermined form but to help him find his own voice and his own path. If his life so far is any indication, it seems that all he needs to do that is access to means of expression that work with his strengths instead of taxing his weaknesses, and room to grow in a space of acceptance and accommodation.